THE HEROIC AGE 198

the gifts of life; but, alas! no war appears so very neces-
sary when time has laid its soothing hand upon the
passionate misunderstandings and the passionate de-
sires of great peoples. "Le temps" as a distinguished
Frenchman has said, "est un galant homme" He
fosters the spirit of concord and justice, in whose work
there is as much glory to be reaped as in the deeds of
arms*

One of them disorganized by revolutionary changes,
the other rusted in the neglect of a decayed monarchy,
the two fleets opposed to us entered the contest with
odds against them from the first. By the merit of our
daring and our faithfulness, and the genius of a great
leader, we have in the course of the war augmented
our advantage and kept it to the last. But in the
exulting illusion of irresistible might a long series of
military successes brings to a nation the less obvious
aspect of such a fortune may perchance be lost to view.
The old navy in its last days earned a fame that no
belittling malevolence dare cavil at. And this supreme
favour they owe to their adversaries alone.

Deprived by an ill-starred fortune of that self-
confidence which strengthens the hands of an armed
host, impaired in skill but not in courage, it may safely
be said that our adversaries managed yet to make a
better fight of it in 1797 than they did in 1793. Later
still, the resistance offered at the Nile was all, and
more than all, that could be demanded from seamen,
who, unless blind or without understanding, must have
seen their doom sealed from the moment that the Goliath,
bearing up under the bows of the Gu&rrier, took up
an inshore berth. The combined fleets of 1805, just
come out of port, and attended by nothing but the
disturbing memories of reverses, presented to our ap-
proach a determined front, on which Captain Black-